The Storm Before the Storm полностью

After Flaccus and Asiaticus departed for the east in the summer of 86, Cinna inaugurated another measure to help stabilize the economy. During the Social War, debasement of coinage and massive counterfeiting had destroyed everyone’s faith in the money supply. Families took to hording their sound money, which further decreased the amount of good money in circulation. To restore faith in the coinage, a commission met to establish uniform metal ratios, exchange rates, and methods for testing suspect coins. We know all of this because one of the commissioners was another nephew of Gaius Marius, named Marcus Marius Gratidianus. Before the commission could announce the results jointly, Gratidianus snatched the plan, ran down to the rostra, and presented the whole thing as his own initiative. Everyone was crazy about the new system. The city fell in love with Gratidianus while the other commissioners were left sputtering inaudible protests.⁴⁶

BY THE SPRING of 86, Sulla had heard of the death of his old rival Marius, and with some relief turned his attention to Archelaus. After departing Athens, the Pontic army finally put back to shore in northeastern Greece. Archelaus disembarked with an army of 120,000 men and marched into the interior. Racing up to meet them, Sulla maneuvered Archelaus toward Chaeronea, where the two armies finally ran into each other. Despite being outnumbered, Sulla’s legions destroyed the Pontic army without breaking a sweat. To give you a flavor of the typical exaggeration of the ancient sources, Sulla reported that at the Battle of Chaeronea over one hundred thousand Pontic soldiers died, while he himself lost only fourteen men. This is a bald-faced lie, but it does not mean Sulla did not win a stunning victory. Archelaus himself managed to escape, but with no army to command, it looked like the brief Pontic occupation of Greece was over.⁴⁷

In the aftermath of his victory, Sulla turned his attention west. Flaccus had by now crossed two legions to Greece, though his intentions were not clear. Prior to his departure the new consul had sent advanced units across the Adriatic, but as soon as these units made contact with Sulla’s legions, they defected. Now in Greece himself, Flaccus was wary of letting the rest of his men anywhere near Sulla’s magnetic pull. So rather than confront Sulla directly, Flaccus kept marching straight to the Hellespont. While he marched, Asiaticus crossed with his own two legions and planted himself on the Macedonian frontier. With Sulla bogged down fighting Archelaus, Flaccus and Asiaticus might just be able to steal Sulla’s thunder by racing into Asia and capturing Mithridates.⁴⁸

Despite the losses at Chaeronea, Mithridates’s Black Sea empire still had manpower left to draw on. Sulla was forced back on campaign when Archelaus sailed back over to Greece at the head of another army 120,000 strong. The two armies met at Orchomenus, and this time Sulla’s troops wavered in the early stages of the fight. But Sulla confronted a cohort in retreat and yelled, “For me, O Romans, an honorable death here; but you, when men ask you where you betrayed your commander, remember to tell them, at Orchomenus.” Shamed into action, the men turned and fought. The Pontic army was once again smashed. Even Mithridates did not have the resources to come back with a third army of 120,000 men. The Battle of Orchomenus marked the end of the war in Greece.⁴⁹

Flaccus meanwhile was nearly to the Hellespont when he fell victim to an unnatural death at the hands of his legate, Gaius Flavius Fimbria. Why the two men began quarreling is a mystery, but as the legions approached the Hellespont, Fimbria was already deep into plotting a mutiny. To curry favor with the men he allowed them to plunder the countryside as they marched and was lax with camp discipline. With his preparations complete, Fimbria staged his mutiny. Flaccus tried to run, but he was hunted down and killed. Fimbria took control of the army.⁵⁰

Now in command, Fimbria led the two legions into Asia on a campaign of punitive plundering. Far from entering as an army of liberation, Fimbria meant to punish the Asian cities for turning against Rome. With Fimbria’s army on the rampage and almost all his troops now lost in Greece, Mithridates was forced to flee Pergamum for Pitane, and even then Fimbria nearly captured him. At that moment, the long-lost Lucullus finally came sailing into the Aegean at the head of a fleet. Lucullus could have easily blockaded the harbor at Pitane and prevented Mithridates from escaping by sea, but ever the loyal legate, Lucullus was not about to let any enemy of Sulla get credit for capturing Mithridates. So Lucullus kept sailing and Mithridates got away.⁵¹